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On 4th
March 1943, we were taken under SS guard to Krematorium II. The construction of
this crematorium was explained to us by Capo [Julius] August [Bruck], who had
just arrived from Buchenwald where he had also been working in the crematorium.
Krematorium II had a basement where there was an undressing room and a bunker,
or in other words a gas chamber. To go from one cellar to the other, there was
a corridor in which there came from the exterior a stairway and a slide for
throwing the bodies that were brought to the camp to be incinerated in the
crematorium. People went through the door of the undressing room into the
corridor, then from there through a door on the right into the gas chamber. A
second stairway running from the grounds of the crematorium gave access to the
corridor. To the left of this stairway, in the corner, there was a little room
where hair, spectacles and other effects were stored. On the right there was
another small room used as a store for cans of Zyclon-B. In the right corner of
the corridor, on the wall facing the door from the undressing room, there was a
lift to transport the corpses. People went from the crematorium yard to the
undressing room via a stairway, surrounded by iron rails. Over the door there
was a sign with the inscription "Zum Baden und Desinfektion" (to bath and
disinfection), written in several languages. I remember the word "banya"
[Russian for steam bath] was there too. From the corridor they went through the
door on the right into the gas chamber. It was a wooden door, made of two
layers of short pieces of wood arranged like parquet. Between these layers
there was a single sheet of material sealing the edges of the door and the
rabbets of the frame were also fitted with sealing strips of felt. At about
head height for an average man this door had a round glass peephole. On the
other side of the door, i.e. on the gas chamber side, this opening was
protected by a hemispherical grid. This grid was fitted because the people in
the gas chamber, feeling they were going to die, used to break the glass of the
peep-hole. But the grid still did not provide sufficient protection and similar
incidents recurred. The opening was blocked with a piece of metal or wood. The
people going to be gassed and those in the gas chamber damaged the electrical
installations, tearing the cables out and damaging the ventilation equipment.
The door was closed hermetically from the corridor side by means of iron bars
which were screwed tight. The roof of the gas chamber was supported by concrete
pillars running down the middle of its length. On either side of these pillars
there were four others, two on each side. The sides of these pillars, which
went up through the roof, were of heavy wire mesh. Inside this grid, there was
another of finer mesh and inside that a third of very fine mesh. Inside this
last mesh cage there was a removable can that was pulled out with a wire to
recover the pellets from which the gas had evaporated.
Besides that, in
the gas chamber there were electric wires running along the two sides of the
main beam supported by the central concrete pillars. The ventilation was
installed in the walls of the gas chamber. Communication between the room and
the ventilation installation proper was through small holes along the top and
bottom of the side walls. The lower openings were protected by a kind of
muzzle, the upper ones by whitewashed perforated metal plates.
The
ventilation system of the gas chamber was coupled to the ventilation ducts
installed in the undressing room. This ventilation system, which also served
the dissection room, was driven by electric motors in the roof space of the
crematorium.
The gas chamber had no water supply of its own. [A
Bauleitung inventory drawing indicates that three taps were in fact installed
in the gas chamber. But they were destroyed in the first gassings and it was
decided not to replace them.]
The water tap was in the corridor and a
rubber hose was run from it to wash the floor of the gas chamber. At the end of
1943, the gas chamber was divided in two by a brick wall to make it possible to
gas smaller transports. In the dividing wall there was a door identical to that
between the corridor and the original gas chamber. Small transports were gassed
in the chamber furthest from the entrance from the corridor.
The
undressing room and the gas chamber were covered first with a concrete slab
then a layer of soil sown with grass. There were four small chimneys, the
openings through which the gas was thrown in, that rose above the gas chamber.
These openings were closed by concrete covers with two handles.
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